BRITAIN will pay France nearly half a billion pounds over the next three years to step up efforts to prevent small boats from crossing the Channel, Rishi Sunak has announced.
The Prime Minister praised the “unprecedented” £478 million package to fund a new detention centre in France and hundreds of extra law enforcement officers on French shores.
Sunak announced the package after holding talks with French president Emmanuel Macron during a UK-France summit at the Elysee Palace in Paris on Friday.
Macron told Sunak the migration returns agreement that he covets under his pledge to “stop the boats” would have to be negotiated with the European Union rather than Paris.
The package comes on top of the more than £300m the UK has committed to France in the last decade to help tackle unauthorised migration.
It is the first time the UK will contribute to building a detention centre in France to help deal with the numbers of people being trafficked.
Ministers said twice as many unauthorised crossings were stopped last year than in the previous 12 months and hope this will be further boosted by drones, aircraft and the additional 500 officers to patrol French beaches.
Sunak said: “We don’t need to manage this problem, we need to break it. And today, we have gone further than ever before to put an end to this disgusting trade in human life. Working together, the UK and France will ensure that nobody can exploit our systems with impunity.”
While there have been suggestions that Sunak’s new asylum legislation may breach the European Convention on Human Rights and cause a fresh rift with the EU, Sunak insisted “we will always comply with our international treaty obligations”.
He added: “I am convinced that within them that we can do what is necessary to solve this shared problem and stop the boats.”
Meanwhile British charities have denounced the current “devastating” agreement, with Amnesty International UK calling for the UK and France to commit to asylum over “heartless anti-refugee measures”.
Migrant rights director Steve Valdez-Symonds said: “Fortress Britain policies won’t work and people will continue to drown in the Channel if ministers stubbornly refuse to make safe routes available to people seeking asylum – particularly when they have family or other strong connections here.”
Christina Marriott from the British Red Cross added: “[Detention centres] would be ineffective, hugely expensive, and contrary to the international laws our country was once proud to have shaped. But most of all, this legislation would be devastating for the men, women and children in need of our help.”
More than 3000 people have already made the perilous journey across the Channel this year. 46,000 arrived on the UK’s south coast in 2022 despite an earlier UK Government agreement to increase patrol officers by 40% four months ago.
